Sudden Problem with 2 Drives

I have two OEM drives in my Dell Dimension 8400, which I have somehow managed to mess up!

The devices:

- DVD Burner: NEC 2100A (previously cross flashed to a _NEC DVD+-RW ND-2510A)
- DVD player: HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8162B

These devices are both connected to the same IDE cable.

The problems:
- The player is currently not recognising any media with messages such as "insert a disk into drive E:"
- The recorder is a little more confusing: it seems to work fine with CD-Rs, DVD+RWs and also regular movie DVDs. However, it refuses to recognise blank DVD+R media and DVD+Rs that were previously burnt on the same device.

I am not sure why this has suddenly happened. I cannot think of many configuration changes. That said, recently, I briefly removed the IDE cable from the drives in order to temporarily connect a second hard disk to copy material to the main internal disk. I regularly install/uninstall software but can't think of any particular software which would cause this problem.

I have tried a few things to try and resolve this problem:

1) uninstalled and reinstalled both drives (via cables and device manager)
2) uninstalled all playing/buring software (which I am aware of!) and reinstalled only the software which came with my machine (Sonic MyDVD, Sonic RecordNow and CyberLink PowerDVD)
3) changed the jumpers from cable select to master (recorder) and slave (player)
4) tried several different brands of DVD+R
5) replaced the IDE cable
6) tried each device independently
7) searched forums and websites for answers - sorry couldn't find a solution (although many people seem to have quite similar experiences!)


I simply can't think of anything else to try. I would greatly appreciate any help as I'm going crazy trying to get to the bottom of this! Also, my hard disk is almost full so I desperately need to archive some data!

I'm happy to provide any other information that would help with diagnosis.

Thanks in advance for your time,

Ken

PS - I know these drives are effectively obsolete: I intend to upgrade some time soon!

Can anybody help please?

Many thanks,

Ken

This sounds like a software conflict. TRy to think of any software or updates you installed around the same time as this problem started and remove the software/updates and see if this cures the problem.